Eli Siegel

Common card · No. 378525

Eli Siegel (August 16, 1902 – November 8, 1978) was the poet, writer, critic, and philosopher who founded Aesthetic Realism, a philosophical movement based in New York City. An idea central to Aesthetic Realism—that every person, place or thing in reality has something in common with all other things—was expressed in the title poem of his first volume, Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana: Poems. His second volume was Hail, American Development. Siegel's works include Self and World: An Explanation of Aesthetic Realism, Definitions, and Comment: Being a Description of the World, and The Aesthetic Nature of the World. His teaching of Aesthetic Realism spanned almost four decades and included thousands of extemporaneous lectures on poetry, the arts and sciences, religion, economics, and national ethics, as well as lessons to individuals and general classes which showed that questions of everyday life are aesthetic and ethical. His lecture on the poetry of William Carlos Williams, which Williams...

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